SOPHOS

Showcase innovative threat expertise

RESULTS

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Increase in Sophos’ 2018 Black Hat coverage compared to 2017 Black Hat coverage

Pieces of coverage garnered as a result of the campaign

Media interviews secured as a result of the campaign

CHALLENGE

Although Sophos didn’t have any news to announce during the Black Hat conference, SophosLabs was planning to launch a piece of proprietary research around SamSam, a sophisticated and highly destructive piece of ransomware, a few weeks prior to the event. March had also been toying for some time with the idea of doing an in-person media tour with one of Sophos’ leading threat experts to give reporters an inside look at the mysterious, and a bit frightening, dark web. March immediately saw an opportunity to combine the two angles as a central hook for touting its secured expertise and securing press interest around Black Hat 2019.

APPROACH

March developed an overarching narrative that packaged the two angles together and incorporated a larger in-person media tour in the immediate run up the event. This enabled March to secure pre-briefings with journalists not attending Black Hat this year or who were too busy to meet with Sophos during the show. It also gave us an angle to hook reporters with that were attending, in lieu of official show new

This approach enabled March to position the tour’s collective coverage as being a result of the team’s Black Hat 2018 campaign showcasing Sophos’ innovation in security research and unparalleled understanding of the threat landscape. What’s more, the angles would help us reach all of Sophos’ key target media audiences– business, trade, technology and broadcast- and not just those attending the event.